NDCA

Hearing tonight on radar safety

Two studies have found no public health risks

Cape Cod Times

By George Brennan

gbrennan@capecodonline.com

July 15, 2008 6:00 AM

No public health risks linked to PAVE PAWS.

BOURNE — The public will have a chance tonight to comment on recent studies that conclude PAVE PAWS, an Air Force radar station, poses no health risks to Cape Codders.

The studies, already released publicly, are summarized in the draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, which will be presented at 7 tonight at the Best Western in Bourne. Residents will be given two minutes each to comment on the findings, which critics have said are flawed. Written comments will be accepted through Aug. 4.

Last December, a state Department of Public Health study concluded it was unlikely that PAVE PAWS was the main cause of 14 local cases of Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, since 1982. Another study by Broadcast Signal Lab in 2005, which did not look at the Ewing’s cases, also concluded there was no risk to public health.

The two studies were prompted by concerns, primarily from parents of children with cancer, raised at public meetings in 2001 and 2002. At the time, the Air Force was proposing an upgrade to the radar station, Air Force environmental planner Lynne Neuman said yesterday.

“Out of those meetings, we found the public wasn’t concerned with the component upgrade, but with the radiofrequency energy and the potential health impacts with those emissions,” she said.

PAVE PAWS, operated by Air Force Space Command, scans the eastern skies for missiles, satellites and space debris. The Sagamore radar station has been in operation since the late 1970s and for nearly as long there have been concerns raised about radiation and the possible health risks associated with exposure to it.

“We’re very confident, and I think the public is confident as well, that these studies have answered their questions,” Lt. Col. Paul Legendre, an environmental engineer with the Air Force, said yesterday.

If you go

A public hearing is scheduled from 7 to 10 tonight at the Best Western, 100 Trowbridge Road, Bourne.

Written comments can be made to Lynne Neuman by e-mail at Lynne.Neuman@Peterson.af.mil; by fax at 719-554-3849; or by mail at HQ AFSPC/A4/7PP, 150 Vandenberg St., Suite 1105, Peterson AFB, CO 80914-2370.

PAVE PAWS draft EIS draws two comments

July 16, 2008 6:00 AM

BOURNE — One critical comment and another in support, that’s all a draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on PAVE PAWS generated at a public hearing last night.

Bernard Young, whose daughter died from Ewing’s sarcoma in January, said the results of health studies summarized by the Air Force report are flawed. Specifically, he said, data collected does not properly report peak emissions from the radar station. He called the conclusions of the impact statement disappointing.

Wayne Sellin, who served on the PAVE PAWS steering group, said the measurement standards used were “superb.”

Last December, a state Department of Public Health study concluded it was unlikely that PAVE PAWS was the main cause of 14 local cases of Ewing’s sarcoma since 1982. Ewing’s sarcoma is a rare bone cancer.

PAVE PAWS, on the Massachusetts Military Reservation near Sagamore, scans the eastern skies for missiles, satellites and space debris.

Written comments on the environmental impact statement will be accepted through Aug. 4. They should be addressed to: HQ AFSPC/A4/7PP, Attn: Lynne Neuman, 150 Vandenberg St., Suite 1105, Peterson AFB, CO 80914-2370.

— GEORGE BRENNAN

Boston GLOBE EDITORIAL

Disease cluster mystery

October 14, 2007

FOR MORE than 20 years, health officials have known about a puzzling concentration of the neurodegenerative illness known as Lou Gehrig’s disease in the southeastern Massachusetts town of Middleborough. In the coming months, a study financed by the federal government and conducted by state environmental health scientists might answer the riddle of whether toxic waste from two Superfund sites in the town has caused the rare and usually fatal disease, which normally strikes just two of 100,000 people.

The state is also working to create a registry to keep track of the disease. In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Environmental Health Tracking Program, such registries can build up the databases that researchers need to track diseases with suspected environmental causes. Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah have called for a $100 million increase in the CDC program’s budget to help the tracking program establish itself nationwide. Congress should approve the funding.

Besides being a potential site for a casino operated by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, Middleborough was home to a metal plating plant and a chemical plant. Their industrial waste became Superfund sites that still have not been entirely cleaned up.

The two best-known victims of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have been Gehrig, the baseball Hall of Famer who died of it, and the physicist Stephen Hawking, who has defied the odds by surviving with the disease for decades. Most of those afflicted die within two to four years. The disease deprives patients of the ability to control motion, speech, and finally breathing, although their minds remain clear. Besides environmental factors, scientists are also exploring genes and viruses as possible causes.

Researchers have studied other ALS clusters. Three men who played football for the San Francisco 49ers in 1964 were diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s. A possible cause was a fertilizer with high levels of the heavy metal cadmium that was used on the team’s practice field. Residents of the western Pacific island of Guam have also had abnormally high rates of the disease. A possible trigger there was an edible bean, the cycad.

The CDC program for tracking environmental links to diseases was spurred by a 2001 Pew Environmental Health Commission report calling for such an effort. The program offers the prospect of integrating, under uniform data standards, the toxic monitoring and health surveillance efforts of a myriad of state agencies. Especially in the case of low-incidence diseases like Lou Gehrig’s, such a nationwide tracking system could be of great benefit to scientists in identifying concentrations and pointing to causes. Congress should give the project the support it needs.